Sold for: $35,100

PROVENANCE
William Colgate, Toronto
Laing Galleries, Toronto
Kenneth G. Heffel Fine Art Inc., Vancouver
Private Collection, British Columbia
Sold sale of Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 10, 2000, lot 121
Private Collection, USA
Sold sale of Fine Canadian Art, Heffel Fine Art Auction House, May 15, 2013, lot 181
Private Collection, Montreal

LITERATURE
Paul Duval, The Tangled Garden: The Art of J.E.H. MacDonald, 1978, page 47

In January of 1913, J.E.H. MacDonald and Lawren Harris traveled to Buffalo to view an exhibition of Scandinavian art at the Albright Art Gallery. To their excitement, they saw paintings of wild northern lands in a style which coincided with their own, and they returned to Toronto to spread the word. Paul Duval wrote that by this time, the two artists “were linked in the minds of their fellow painters as the two leaders or ‘conspirators’ of a new school of Canadian painting.”

In January of 1914, MacDonald was painting in the now-famous Studio Building on Severn Street in Toronto, alongside other future Group of Seven members. Tom Thomson was also painting there, telling tales of the Algonquin Park wilderness, his prime source of inspiration. In March of that year, MacDonald headed to Algonquin, where he painted with J.W. Beatty and A.Y. Jackson, producing a group of oil panels, such as this bold depiction of a swamp still engulfed by winter snow. His strong brushwork, clear atmosphere and fine use of blue shadows to contrast pure snowdrifts make this a superb sketch from this trip.

There is an unfinished sketch on verso.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars